Bird on a Hot Tin Roof
by atromiti
Summary: Collection of SladeRobin drabbles.
1. To Laugh or Cry

**Warnings for angst and apprentice-arc noncon.**

**---**

Beast Boy tells him he doesn't laugh enough, and it's true. Maybe because Robin doesn't find Beast Boy's jokes even remotely amusing, or maybe it's more than that. Robin often wonders what it would feel like to throw his head back and let loose a side-splitting, shoulder-shaking peal of genuine laughter, spontaneous and complete. He doesn't try, because it wouldn't be worth it for the loss of control. Raven, he thinks, is the only one who really understands this.

He doesn't cry, either, and he wonders what that would feel like, too. To fall to his knees and scream and sob and choke on tears and spit. Wonders if it would make him feel better or worse. He has the feeling he knew, once, what it felt like. To cry. And to laugh. He doesn't remember.

Slade _makes_ him remember. When he drags Robin down to his knees, fingers twisting in his hair, and whispers a story about a boy who tried to be a leader and failed, that's when it occurs to Robin that the control he's so desperately tried to maintain is long gone. Then he has the choice of whether to laugh or to cry.


	2. Said Versilov to Akhmakov

**Iffy consent.**

---

Obsessive hate and obsessive love are so closely related that they overlap more often than not.

But then…Starfire. Those feelings are clear. Simple love. The forever kind. The lie-under-the-stars-and-cuddle kind. The kind he used to think was all that existed between lovers.

With Slade, it's hard and fast and brutal and the kind of thing you can't forget, not ever.

And Robin falls asleep thinking of all the different ways he'd like to kill Slade, but when he dreams, he's dreaming of painful kisses and strange nights spent away from the tower.

Slade's thumb brushing his swollen mouth, Slade's gaze locking with his, Slade who he hates more than anything and needs more than everything.

Lying under the night sky, gripping his hand, Starfire promises "I will never let you go," and she means it.

Lying on top of Robin, gripping his wrists, Slade promises "I will never let you go," and he means it too.

---

"My feeling must be of the species they call passion…one thing I know for sure: without you it's the end of me, and with you it's also the end. I also know that I could hate you a good deal more than I could love you."

-- Andrei Versilov to Katerina Akhmakov from Dostoevsky's novel, _The Adolescent_


	3. Sensory Aspects

**Notes: Apprentice-arc. Very noncon.**

**---**

So Slade has him naked and cuffed to the bed, and that's probably how torture is usually conducted. This is totally logical. Textbook. It's all in the superhero manual. It's in the script. Robin's telling himself this as Slade descends, Slade's body pressing him down, Slade's face filling his vision.

Big, hard hands, stroking and petting, and that's okay. Slade's just figuring out where to put the needles. Again, average unoriginal plain old torture. Impersonal. Needles. Needles are impersonal.

And when Slade kisses him hard and deep, this really is just torture, like any other kind. Spreading Robin's legs apart, Slade is just like every other bad guy, and the bad guy always loses.

What Slade is murmuring in his ear, about his body, about his darkest fears, and the fact that he belongs to Slade now, that's just typical villain banter.

Robin tells himself over and over again and wonders if he'll ever believe it.


	4. Esprit de l'escalier

**What, fluff? For this pairing? Am I mad?**

**It appears I am. :O**

**--**

Robin usually has a quip for every occasion.

It's part of his superhero persona; he's the guy with the brazen one-liners. They dry up in his throat when Slade looks at him like that, the eye narrowing with a smile he can't see. It's…distracting

Like everything else, Robin is losing the war of wordplay to Slade.

And afterwards, he always—_always—_comes up with the perfect retort.

Then, for once, it's different. He's actually winning. He lifts his chin and opens his mouth.

The first syllable is muffled into Slade's mouth.

Typical.

Slade always has to have the last word.


	5. Roses on the Grave

For a little while now, Robin has been getting roses.

Just every now and then, he'll walk into his room and there it will be, a flawless rose on his desk, with a little card bearing nothing but a stylized copper "S." He hates how unsurprising it is that Slade can break into the Tower undetected.

Robin should set up traps in his room, attempt to use this to his advantage.

He says this to himself every time, and every time, he just picks up the rose and stares at the velvety petals and wishes he could bring himself to crush the bud beneath his boot.

Each time Slade kisses him, a part of Robin dies, like a petal falling from that pink rose, once white, and getting redder and redder every day.

He wishes that Starfire would come to honor his death once in a while instead of Slade. But that's never going to happen; she doesn't even realize he's gone.

So his killer is the only one to mourn him, with roses on his living grave.


	6. Hemlock

Perhaps Socrates understood the incomparable pain of exile, and that is why he chose to drink his cup of poison hemlock.

Whenever Robin wakes up with his face wet with crying for the things that he's lost, Slade kisses him hard and deep and tells him that he can't go back.

Robin doesn't want to know what it means that he sometimes longs for the mercy of hemlock.


	7. Unlearn Me

**AN: **And the reward for shortest drabble ever goes to… (consults sheet). Huh. Turns out "Hemlock" was shorter. Sorry guys. My TT!muse is still comatose.

---

He can't say it was something he expected

He can't say it was something he wanted.

He _can_ say that Slade tastes warm and spicy and smells like skin and hair when there's no armor. He can say that Slade has thick hair and a sharp smile and strong hands.

He can, but he won't, because no one wants to hear that. He wouldn't either. He wishes he could unlearn it.


	8. Forever

Nothing is forever.

Love flickers out. Scars fade. Diamonds eventually decompose into graphite.

_The teeth along his jaw, the body grinding him into an unfamiliar bed…_

Nothing is forever. That doesn't explain why, even years later, he can feel strong hands pressing down on his shoulder and wrist, pinning him like a butterfly to the corkboard.

_Pulling at his hair, twisting his head up, his lips burning…_

Nothing is forever, but time is not linear. It's moving too slow and too fast.

_Over and over and over and…_

He wishes forever would end.


	9. Time

**For ****tsuzuki13**

**It's almost fluffy. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!**

**---**

Prowling the rooftops has been a nightly routine for as long as he can remember.

Three muggings later, a shadow falls upon him. A very big shadow.

"Hello, Robin."

The shadow shifts and Slade takes a step closer. Before he knows it, the man's close enough to—

To touch his face. Slade's fingers ghost a hair's breadth from his cheek, and Robin has a choice; take the opening for a chop to Slade's unprotected solar plexus, or stay still and let it happen.

He goes for the solar plexus, and finishes the night off with bruises, a limp, and an escaped supervillain.

He chose right, but he can't stop thinking about that night, days, weeks, even months later, every time he patrols. He doesn't know what he's waiting for until he gets it.

The shadow. The very big shadow.

And an amused, almost gentle voice. "There's always time, Robin."


	10. Shutter Speed

Momentum; not so much the ability to keep going as the inability to stop.

The beauty of it is that he'll come to you. He's been set in motion, and in that moment, he forfeited the decision to stop. Robin's been building up momentum for years, and now he's on a collision course.

You intend to be waiting at the end of it, pinning him down despite the speed and _keeping_ him down.

He's yours now. It's only a matter of time.


End file.
